On this day 50 years ago, the Post-Courier of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, ran a feature by Russian climatologist Mikhail Budyko about, well, climate change. It had originally been published in the UNESCO Courier.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 331ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Russians (including Budyko and Federov had been looking at atmospheric change – deliberate and accidental since the late 1950s.
The specific context was that still, in the mid-1970s it wasn’t clear to everyone if we were going to get hotter (and why) or colder (and why). There were still competing theories around dust etc.
What I think we can learn from this – the UNESCO Courier was a proper publication. We used to be a smart-ish species. We have idiotified ourselves. Or been idiotified by the most greedy and vicious among us, who find an intelligent populace a threat.
What happened next. The debates, sadly, continued, long after they needed to. The World Meteorological Organisation proposed and hosted a climate conference in 1979, and in a less suicidal timeline that would have led to actual action on carbon dioxide. Oh well.
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On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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References
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
If you want to get involved, let me know.
If you want to invite me on your podcast, that would boost my ego and probably improve the currently pitiful hit-rate on this site (the two are not-unrelated).
Also on this day:
August 5, 1971 – First “South Pacific Forum” happens
August 5, 1997 – “Climate Change Policies in Australia” briefing
August 5, 2010 – academics call for insurance industry to get involved in climate fight
